Our Times: Readings from Recent Periodicals » (5th Edition)

ROBERT ATWAN founded the Best American Essays series, for which he serves as series editor. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Atlantic Monthly, and Kenyon Review. For Bedford Books, he has edited Ten on Ten: Major Essayists on Recurring Themes and America Now: Short Readings from Recent Periodicals, now in its second edition, and he has coedited, with Donald McQuade, The Writer's Presence: A Pool of Essays, also in its second edition, and, with Jon Roberts, Left, Right, and Center: Voices from across the Political Spectrum.

Like its best-selling predecessors, the fifth edition of Our Times is built entirely around very contemporary selections from a wide variety of very recent periodicals on intriguing topics of very current interest -- more than ninety percent published since 1996 . With a new profile of the Class of 2000 based on UCLA's national survey of college freshmen, the fifth edition of Our Times does even more to get students talking about where they stand in relation to their peers as well as to professional writers. And with plenty of selections that can be used as models and an even stronger focus on writing in the unique apparatus, Our Times shows students how to turn lively discussion about personal and public issues into effective writing.

Preface for Instructors

1. Today's Freshman: How Do You Fit the Profile?
Student Information Form (Higher Education Research Institute)
An Overview of the Class of 2000 (The American Freshman: National Norms For Fall 1996)
Selected 1996 Survey Results (The American Freshman: National Norms For Fall 1996)
IN THE NEWS: Survey Finds '90s College Freshmen More Conservative than Predecessors (The New York Times, January 13, 1997)

2. Countdown to the Millennium: What Can We Expect?
Q & A: Richard Landes on the Millennium (People, June 9, 1997)
Tim Appelo, The Millennium Looms: Do You Know What to Call the New Century? (Los Angeles Times Magazine, June 23, 1996)
IN THE NEWS: The Pending Millennium (Harper's, August 1997)
Meg Greenfield, Back to the Future (Newsweek, January 27, 1997)
Stephen D. O'Leary, Heaven's Gate and the Culture of Popular Millennialism (Center for Millennial Studies, April 1997)

3. Self-Image: How Do We Feel about the Way We Look?
Garry Trudeau, My Inner Shrimp (The New York Times Magazine, March 31, 1996)
Jennifer Silver, Caught with a Centerfold (Mademoiselle, January 1997)
Robin Marantz Henig, The Price of Perfection (Civilization, May/June 1996)
ADVERTISEMENT: Obsession Fetish (Utne Reader, January/February 1997)

4. Only Words: Does Language Matter?
M. P. Dunleavey, "Guy" Envy (Glamour, May 1996)
Richard Dooling, Unspeakable Names (The New York Times, September 6, 1996)
IN THE NEWS: Speaking of Disabilities (The Weekly Standard, February 10, 1997)
William Raspberry, To Throw in a Lot of "Bes," or Not? (The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, January 6, 1997)
DOCUMENT: Linguistics Society of America Resolution on the Oakland "Ebonics" Issue (January 3, 1997)

5. Automobiles: Do We Need Them?
Jane Holtz Kay, Without a Car in the World (Technology Review, July 1997)
James Q. Wilson, Cars and Their Enemies (Commentary, July 1997)
IN THE NEWS: Car Ads Sell the Fantasy, Not Facts (Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1996)
William Hamilton, Automotivational Counseling (Buzz, June/July 1996)
ADVERTISEMENT: Oldsmobile Intrigue (Life, Fall 1997)

6. Gender Differences: How Real Are They?
Deborah Tannen, I'm Sorry, I Won't Apologize (The New York Times Magazine, July 21, 1996)
IN THE NEWS: Is Sugar and Spice in Genes of Girls? (The New York Times, June 12, 1997)
James Fallows, "Throwing Like a Girl" (The Atlantic Monthly, August 1996)
Leslie Marmon Silko, In the Combat Zone (The Hungry Mind Review, Fall 1995)

7. "I'm a Feminist, But . . .": Where Is the Women's Movement Headed?
Katie Roiphe, The Independent Woman (and Other Lies) (Esquire, February 1997)
EXCHANGE: A Feminist Redefined, with Replies (The New York Times, March 4, 6, and 10, 1997)
Yvonne Abraham, Lipstick Liberation (The Boston Phoenix, May 30, 1997)
Christina Hoff Sommers, The "Fragile American Girl" Myth (American Enterprise, May/June 1997)
ADVERTISEMENT: I'll Never Fight for Women's Rights
EXCHANGE: Susan Faludi and Karen Lehrman on Revisionist Feminism (Slate, April 28 and May 7, 1997)

8. Immigration: Can We Formulate a Policy?
Peter Salins, Assimilation, American Style (Reason, February 1997)
Trishala Deb, The Alien Nation: Debunking the Myth (Contraband, May 1997)
COMMENT: Lamar Smith on Immigration (U.S.A. Today Magazine, March 1997)
Richard Rodriguez, Go North, Young Man (Mother Jones, August 1995)

9. America's Schools: What's Wrong with Education?
John Taylor Gatto, Why Schools Don't Educate (Hope, October 1996)
Richard Weissbourd, The Feel-Good Trap (The New Republic, August 19 and 26, 1996)
CARTOON: A+ (The Washington Post, February 17, 1997)
Amitai Etzioni, Education for Intimacy (Tikkun, March/April 1997)

10. English-Only Laws: Does America Need an Official Language?
Robert D. King, Should English Be the Law? (The Atlantic Monthly, April 1997)
COMMENT: Robert Dole on English Only (National Education Association)
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Language and American Citizens (Dissent, Summer 1996)
Karen Narasaki, Double Talk (A. Magazine, February/March 1996)
ADVERTISEMENT: Why an Immigrant Heads an Organization Called U.S. English (National Review, June 16, 1997)

11. Class War: Can the Poor Survive?
William Julius Wilson, Work (The New York Times Magazine, August 18, 1996)
Kim Phillips, Lotteryville, USA (Baffler #7, 1995)
Q & A: Fran Lebowitz on Money (Vanity Fair, July 1997)
U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, The Unfinished Agenda: Race, Poverty, and Gender in America (The Progressive Populist, March 1997)
COMMENT: David Whitman on Poor Whites (U.S. News & World Report, December 9, 1996)
SPEECH: John J. Sweeney on Working (Dissent, Winter 1997)

12. Same Sex . . . Any Sex: Is Marriage Obsolete?
Jonathan Rauch, For Better or Worse? (The New Republic, May 6, 1996)
Anne-Marie Cusac, Tying the Gordian Knot (The Progressive, January 1997)
COMMENT: Thomas Sowell on Gay Marriage (The Town Hall Conservative Current, July 18, 1996)
Ariel Kaminer, Something Old, Something New (Might, March/April 1997)
SPEECH: Ed Fallon on Same-Sex Marriage (Speech to the House, February 20, 1996)

13. Affirmative Action: Do We Still Need It?
Stanley Fish, When Principles Get in the Way (The New York Times, December 26, 1996)
Raymond W. Mack, Whose Affirmative Action? (Society, March/April 1996)
DOCUMENT: SP-1, Resolution of the University of California Board of Regents (Representations, Summer 1996)
COMMENT: Jesse Jackson on Civil Rights (The Nation, June 9, 1997)
Rachel F. Moran, Unrepresented (Representations, Summer 1996)

CONFERENCE CHAPTERS

14. Understanding Multiracialism: Are Labels Important?
Q & A: Ann Laurer Stoler on the Construction of Race (The Detroit Free Press, July 7, 1996)
Jack White, "I'm Just Who I Am" (Tiger Woods and the Melding of America) (Time, May 5, 1997)
IN THE NEWS: Poll Finds Few Support Label of Multiracial (The New York Times, May 16, 1997)
Sunil Garg, Under My Skin ("Don't Call Me a Person of Color") (The New York Times, September 7, 1996)
Lylah M. Alphonse, Race Needs "Other" Option (The Boston Globe, October 5, 1996)
Q & A: Camille Paglia on the Tyranny of Racial Categories (Salon, March 18, 1997)
Douglas Preston, The Lost Man (The New Yorker, June 16, 1997)
DOCUMENT: Human Remains Should Be Reburied (Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, 1997)
Eric Liu, The Unbearable Being of Whiteness (Slate, June 13, 1997)

15. America's Mass Media and Popular Culture: How Does It Influence Us?
Cynthia Crossen, Blah, Blah, Blah: Is Anyone Listening? (The Wall Street Journal, July 10, 1997)
Jill Nelson, Talk Is Cheap (The Nation, June 5, 1995)
Patricia J. Williams, Hate Radio (Ms., 1994)
Steven D. Stark, Local News: The Biggest Scandal on TV (The Washington Monthly, June 1997)
ADVERTISEMENT: T.V. Is Good (People, September 15, 1997)
Geoffrey O'Brien, Sein of the Times (The New York Review of Books, August 14, 1997)
James B. Twitchell, But First, a Word from Our Sponsor (The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 1996)
Nick Gillespie, View Masters: The Audience's Power over Media's Message (Reason, February 1996)

Alternative Tables of Contents: Rhetorical Patterns, Integrating Information, and Motivations for Writing
The Periodicals: Information for Subscription
Index of Authors and Titles